[R] Excel (off-topic, sort of)

[Albicelli, Nicholas (Exchange)]

Except for the ability to perform circular recalculation, I believe that the closest programming analogy to a spreadsheet is a functional programming language.  Check out Haskell (or LISP or Erlang) to do what you describe.

-----Original Message-----
From: r-help-bounces at stat.math.ethz.ch [mailto:r-help-bounces at stat.math.ethz.ch] On Behalf Of François Pinard
Sent: Wednesday, August 29, 2007 11:36 AM
To: Alberto Monteiro
Cc: r-help at stat.math.ethz.ch
Subject: Re: [R] Excel (off-topic, sort of)

[Alberto Monteiro]

> Maybe I'll write a letter to Santa Claus [there are people
> who write to congressman; they must have more faith than me].

:-) :-)

> I wish a language where I can write

>  a = b + 10

> and then when I write

>  a = 20

> the language automatically assigns b = 10.

METAFONT does this (and consequently, Metapost as well).  I still 
remember my surprise when I found out that Donald Knuth resorts to such 
sophisticated machinery for the sole purpose of designing font 
characters.  Knuth surely did many wonderful things :-).

-- 
François Pinard   http://pinard.progiciels-bpi.ca

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